


i know we can make it (if we take it slow)

by apatternedfever



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (on Sam's part and not a big focus but definitely there), Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky/Steve if you squint, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mental Health Issues, Natasha Is a Good Bro, Not Beta Read, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Sam Steve and Nat show up too but it's a Bucky fic, Sam Wilson is a Gift, Spoon Theory, Spoons, Steve is trying very hard to know what to do, difficulty asking for and refusing things, not specified as anything but in a general "Bucky issues" kind of way, past Sam/Riley if you squint, why did I write Bucky fic? I don't know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-15
Updated: 2014-10-15
Packaged: 2018-02-21 06:52:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2458871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apatternedfever/pseuds/apatternedfever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam teaches Bucky about the spoon theory. Somehow, it actually helps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i know we can make it (if we take it slow)

**Author's Note:**

> My partner said, "I really need to believe that somewhere exists a fic in which Sam has explained the spoon theory to Bucky and he starts actually using it, even if it’s only in his own head." Hour and a half later, I had this. This is terribly self-indulgent in a lot of ways, but what are you gonna do.
> 
> If you don't know it, [the Spoon Theory is here.](http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/) I always feel a little hesitant using things like this in fic, but again, self-indulgence, and a little catharsis. (If it helps anyone who's hesitant about reading things like this in fic: I have severe mental illnesses and low-level chronic pain myself, and a lot of the thought processes in this fic are based on either my own or friends with similar problems.)
> 
> Title from the Killers' _When You Were Young_. Not beta read, so if you see any mistakes, please point them out.

It starts with a text to Natasha.

Natasha and Bucky took longer to stop dancing around each other warily and assessing each other as threat than Sam and Bucky — but once they did, they got on like a house on fire. She’s not as okay as Steve, but no one’s as okay as Steve, and everyone except Steve seems to have accepted this as how it is. And Bucky’s not always allowed around Natasha, either, but she trusts him — enough to sleep in an apartment he’s guarding, and to do things like leave her phone on the table when she gets up for more coffee.

(It takes what should be an embarrassingly long time to realize that she did it on purpose.)

Bucky doesn’t meant to read the whole thing, but it’s in his eye line and his gaze falls on it anyway.The top of the screen breaks one of Sam’s texts in half:

_stop missing him so much eventually  
but not this year_

_ill be there in 30. do u need anything?_

_can you pick up food?_  
i’ll put in the order  
don’t have the spoons to cook or go out today 

_sure_

_thanks natasha  
ur the best_

_i know ;)_

Bucky doesn’t let himself get caught staring at it, because he’s better than that (even if, in this area, Natasha’s better than him), but he’s still puzzling over it when she’s already downed her coffee and walked out the door. Not having spoons for cooking makes sense, even though he’s been in Sam’s kitchen and it’s well-stocked — but that’s obviously not what he means, or the rest of it doesn’t make sense.

He doesn’t ask that night, or the next. If Sam’s upset enough to need to ask for someone’s help, that probably means he should leave Sam alone for a day or two and let him get through whatever it is. But the next week, Sam drops by to spend some time at the apartment, and when they end up alone together for a minute, he ask before he can second-guess whether or not he should.

"What does _spoons_ mean?” He scowls at himself, his own messy phrasing, but Sam’s not stupid, and the measured look he gets tells him that at least a little of his meaning got through.

"I’m guessing you don’t mean the utensil." Bucky confirms with a nod, and Sam raises his eyebrows. "Where’d you hear about that?"

He considers lying, but there’s no real point to it. He doesn’t know where else he’d have heard of it (although on the internet is usually a safe bet; when he doesn’t want Steve to know where he found out about something, it’s a useful default), and he doesn’t think Sam will care that much. He didn’t find out anything too sensitive from the exchange — there’s someone he misses, and he doesn’t have spoons, whatever that might mean. “I saw Natasha’s phone. You said it to her. You didn’t have spoons to go out. What does that mean?”

Sam nods as if Bucky’s confirming something he already suspected, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth for a second before his expression settles, serious and calm. It’s the kind of expression he got a lot when they’d just found Bucky, or when Steve’s being stubborn about refusing to have a bad day, and Bucky’s learned to listen to it. Sometimes he ignores what’s said after he’s heard, but it’s usually worth listening to Sam when he gets that look.

"It’s a metaphor," he starts carefully, and pauses, looking up in thought. Bucky waits.

In the end, he makes Sam explain twice, to make sure he understands it, and then pulls up the website after Sam’s left for the night. He’s not sure he understands exactly — not the story, he thinks he gets the story, but why he feels the need to read it again, a second time and then a third. Why he doesn’t really want to close out after he’s read it a fourth time, even though he’s starting to memorize the wording.

He saves the website, makes himself close it, and decides it’s time to step away from the computer for the night.

*

He starts saying it in his head by accident, after another night where he sits there and reads it four times over, another night where he isn’t sure why he can’t close it out.

Steve is dressed and standing between Bucky and the television, trying to convince him to come out for an hour. It’s early enough that nowhere’s going to be crowded, Steve knows he hasn’t been outside in a few weeks, and he’s been talking for almost half an hour, trying to get Bucky to do more than grunt and try and look through him and wait for Steve to just go. He’s on the verge of saying yes as Steve lapses into another reminder of how nice the weather’s been lately, how it’s going to get cold soon — just to make Steve happy, even though he’s tired and hasn’t slept in a week, even though he doesn’t know how he can be a person around anyone today, not even Steve, even though he—

_I don’t have the spoons for this_ , he finds himself thinking, and he almost laughs in surprise at himself. He doesn’t know what passes across his face, but Steve stops talking for a minute, frowning and look at him closer.

"Buck?" he says uncertainly, letting it hang in the air, and Bucky drags his eyes up to Steve’s face, swallowing around the words stuck in his throat. He’s not sure how he manages to get them out, but he does, quiet and small.

"Can I just stay home today?"

Steve’s startled, but he nods almost before the words are out of Bucky’s mouth. Bucky asking for things is still about as rare as Bucky outright saying no, and Steve only refuses him something if he absolutely has to. “Yeah, of course. I just — nevermind. Yeah. You want me to stay, too?”

Bucky shrugs his normal shoulder, burrowing into the side of the couch — he wouldn’t mind it, but asking has drained him even more, and he doesn’t think he’s got it in him to ask for Steve’s company, even if it’s being offered first.

Steve drops onto the couch next to him, not quite touching and trying not to stare out of the corner of his eye as he hands Bucky the remote. Bucky catches his hand after taking it from him, and when Steve leans over enough to press their shoulders together, he relaxes just a little bit.

It’s not much, but it’s better than he thought the morning would be.

*

But that morning is like a dam breaking, and without really knowing if he’s doing it right or even allowed to, Bucky ends up thinking it all the time. He never says it out loud, but somehow saying it to himself, having the words for it, helps. When he has to go outside; when he’s not capable of dealing with Natasha or Sam or sometimes, rarely, even Steve; when he can’t sleep but can’t find the energy to get back up again; when he can’t stop himself from checking the perimeter and the exits for the sixth time that night; when he’s hungry but can’t make enough choices to get food for himself.

_I don’t have the spoons for this_ , he thinks to himself, or sometimes, _spoons are low today_ , and it makes saying other things easier.

"Can I do this tomorrow?"

"Can you go see them instead?"

"I can’t sleep."

"I can’t sit down yet."

"Can I eat?"

Steve stops giving him startled looks eventually, gets used to Bucky’s newfound ability to ask. He can’t quite ask for things he doesn’t _need_ out of the blue, and he still isn’t good at refusing anything he feels is an order (and anything Steve outright tells him, instead of asking him, is an order — but Steve rarely tells him instead of asking), but it gets easier. It’s still hard — but hard is easier than impossible.

*

The first time he says it out loud, he’s half asleep.

Steve is trying to wake him up, because Bucky’s been sleeping thirty hours straight, and even if he needed it, after how long he went without it and how badly his brain went sideways before sleep, that’s still a day without food. It’s not that Bucky can’t do that — he knows just how long he can go without food, and thirty hours is nothing — but Steve doesn’t like to let him. Steve claims it’s not healthy, and every time Bucky tries to argue that he’ll be fine so why does it matter, Steve just looks worried and sad and like he wants to go dig up someone’s grave and punch their corpse. So Bucky stopped arguing pretty early.

But being awake is more than he can stand today, so he swats Steve’s hands away — lightly, always lightly, always with his flesh hand, always careful, even half asleep, not to hurt Steve — and groans into his pillow.

"Can you get up for an hour? Just for food?" Steve suggests, careful to make it just that, a suggestion.

"I don’t have the spoons for food," he mumbles, "I’m tired."

"You — what?" Steve asks, and Bucky freezes for a second before burrowing deeper under the blanket.

"Ask Sam," he advises, and pulls it all the way up over his head.

*

He doesn’t expect Steve to actually ask Sam, but he does.

He doesn’t expect Steve to decide that Bucky using it is a good sign, but he does.

He doesn’t expect Steve to encourage it, but he does.

"Do you have the spoons for this?" Steve starts asking, when it’s a bad day or Steve just thinks it might be, and it’s easier for Bucky to say he doesn’t than it is to flat-out turn Steve down. Or, "How’s the spoons today?" he’ll ask after Bucky wakes up or after Steve’s been out, his tongue tripping awkwardly over the sentence the first few times before it becomes familiar, a routine they don’t do every day, but more often that not.

It makes it easier. Easier to keep asking for things, to keep saying things. Easier to let Steve know when things aren’t okay. Easier to handle what he can, when he starts acknowledging what he can’t. Easier to acknowledge that he can’t handle something, when Steve is giving him constant permission, when somebody else has gone through it enough — even in such a different circumstance — to put a name to it.

And slowly, so slowly he doesn’t notice it until everyone else points it out, he finds he doesn’t have as many days where he has to admit the spoons are low, he doesn’t have as much trouble finding the ability to do things without forcing himself. By inches and drips and with plenty of backslides, but still — it comes to him. The spoons start showing up. The good days start showing up and staying longer. It’s never perfect. It’s never all the way to where he wanted to be. But it’s better, slowly but surely.

*

One year — way down the road, after he’s learned about Riley and the one day a year Sam is never really okay, no matter how he is the rest of the year — he has three bouquets of spoons delivered to Sam’s house, a week before That Day. Real bouquets, tied up in ribbons and stuck in a vase and everything — the order had gotten him a lot of odd looks when he set up the delivery, but Steve had been laughing next to him, and that had made it easier.

Sam’s laughing too, when he calls. “Three?” is all he says, before the words dissolve into another chuckle.

"I thought you might be needing them sometime soon," Bucky answers, tone even — and face nothing like straight, but Sam can’t see that. "Everyone could use some extra spoons."

"Truer words, man." Sam quiets down, and they lapse into silence for a minute before he says, more seriously, "Thanks."

"No problem." And Bucky knows he doesn’t have to say it, knows the message got through, but he does anyway: "If you need anything—"

"I’ll call," Sam tells him, and Bucky knows he will. He might not; Steve and Natasha probably wouldn’t, in Sam’s place. But Sam’s better at admitting that then they are. "It’s a better week than last year’s. Last year’s was better than the year before. Better’s all you can ask for, you know?"

"Truer words," Bucky echoes, and means it with every fiber of his being, every spoon he’s got today that he didn’t have last week, last month, last year.

Better isn’t perfect. Better might never be perfect.

But if better’s what they get, Bucky thinks he can live with that.


End file.
